With the hope that Santa rewarded America's colleges and universities for being exceptionally good prior to the 2014 holiday season (such gifts to include a healthy applicant pool, vigorous end-of-calendar-year giving by alumni and friends, stable retention of current students for the spring term), it's time for a few new year's resolutions.

There is no cure for the reality that the traditional undergraduate population is declining in numbers, that student debt is a ferocious beast that cows students and families, and that the expectation that a college degree will guarantee entry into one's preferred employment field is not always well founded.

Apart from the obvious excitement of hiking through the Amazon or strolling in the world's greatest museums, defining exactly how a liberal arts background can be useful to career-focused graduates is more than an exercise in college marketing. It's the key to our survival as institutions.

For one afternoon, win or lose at the stadium, all of the metrics and objectives, enrollment targets and spreadsheets of my job are left on the desk, replaced by a kaleidoscope called homecoming. And, yes, there is nothing like it.

Fifty years ago, in 1963, the media landscape was still dominated by the printed word, and by the imperative of getting the story right before it was published in early and final editions of America's newspapers.

MOOCs pose some complex questions: What MOOC credits are transferable? From which other institutions will we accept them? How and by whom will such courses be evaluated for equivalency and quality with existing courses and degree requirements?

Although we college presidents are often expected to play Santa to our multiple constituents, we also have holiday wishes of our own. I submit my Christmas list in hopes that Bethany College and our nation's other higher education institutions will be rewarded for being good this year.